Final Fantasy Seven: J I H A D
by iamzuul
Summary: Three years after the end of the game, the Mayor of Junon is saved by our heroes as a Shinra faction tries and succeeds to get back into power. Rebellious parties, ex-heroes, and evil alien spawn run rampant. [incomplete, indefinately on hold]


****

Title: _FFVII: J I H A D_

****

Rating: PG-13, but subject to change as the story moves along

****

Summary: Taking place almost three years after the end of the game, our heroes have gone their respective ways in life. And then the Mayor of Junon is saved by our heroes as a Shinra faction tries and succeeds to get back into power. Rebellious parties, ex-heroes, and evil alien spawn run rampant. 

****

Disclaimer: I own a pug, a computer, and a truck that has all the pick up of a semi. If I owned the idea of FFVII, I'd be rich. As it is, I was a few years too late. Damn inspiration!

****

Comments: I've written this story once, then tried to rewrite it, and now I am writing it again. The first and second versions were horrible Mary Sues; thankfully, with age and experience I've come up with a plan to make this story workable without the horrible presence of mind-sucking OC's. Here's to hoping I can do it right.

****

Word Count: 1,038 words; 4 written pages; 3 typed pages.

.

.

.

.

.

--

****

Jihad Prologue:

__

The Beginning of the End

--

.

All was as it should be.

For years she had been taught that the Promised Land was a vibrant place of peaceful souls, cheerful and happy once the physical encumberments of life had been left behind. The afterlife had certainly seemed a noisy place in the past, when she had been an outsider looking in – unable to see, but talented enough to listen when the voices of the dead were loud enough to reach her.

But what she found, when she finally made the trip, was something else entirely – all the souls of the deceased had merged into one cohesive whole, a surging mass of memories and emotion that served as the lifeblood of the Planet. It was chaotic; since coming here, she had finally understood why so many who underwent mako infusions or mako poisoning went mad – they were simply unable to stand up against the mental onslaught of millions of conflicting emotions.

But some were strong enough, willful enough to resist the pull of the Promised Land's current of souls. Sephiroth had been one. Even in death, his determination had been so fierce that he was able to dip into that vast pool of knowledge and sort out what was pertinent information and what was useless emotional baggage. That it had taken a confrontation on the purely spiritual level to destroy him was a sobering realization indeed. And she was not afraid to admit that she did not have the strength that he once had, warped though it may have been.

It took a strong mental shield to prevent her from giving into the pull and merging with the lifestream; it would have been all too easy to let go and allow the memories of so many souls to wash over her. And the information contained within those memories was tempting as well – the true lure of the Promised Land, to become one with the Planet and all the souls that lived upon it, human and otherwise, and revel in the secret of life that was revealed once the individual self was given up. 

But she couldn't do that yet; there were many things she had to accomplish before she even considered given up the mental shields that surrounded her. So she forced herself to look _through_ the writhing current of souls, rather than _at_ it, searching for the bright specks of light that indicated souls shielded from the lifestream, like her. For some it was a case of selfishness or denial; for others, it was a case of simply being too strong-willed to be sucked into the Promised Land – these few spirits went on after death, wrapped in the silver light of mental wards, unable to continue on until they accepted the inevitability of their position. To lose themselves and their memories to the torrent of streaming energy and allow new beings to be born from their vitality – or remain separate forever, in an eternal limbo that prevented them the peace of oblivion. A painful choice to ultimately make.

But from these wandering spirits she could gather the information she was questing for, indisputable facts that would back up her hunch that all was not yet over. Meteor had been destroyed by the Planet and the help of Holy, but something was not quite right. Perhaps that feeling of unease could be attributed to the tremors that still rocked the land as the Planet re-aligned itself – the danger was past, but the healing still had to begin. 

Even so she could not shake the feeling that disaster had simply been diverted, rather than circumvented. She had to find out more; she had to delve the minds of the most ancient of these wandering spirits and find out what the Planet was once like, forty years past, before the first mako reactor was built.

Beyond the silver glow of her shields was an endless green sea of souls, speckled here and there with the starlight of meandering spirits. There were fewer than she recalled seeing before Meteor touched down; perhaps the surge of energy that had destroyed the wayward asteroid had carried some with it? Had their choice to remain separate from the Promised Land come to nothing in the end?

Even as she watched, those lights began to dissipate, moving apart in the current of the lifestream. She could not help but be disturbed by this behavior – that was not the aimless wandering of errant spirits. It looked more as though they were… fleeing.

What could cause these eternal, nigh indestructible souls to run as though something were chasing them?

She did not have long to wait to find the answer.

Surging against the flow of the Promised Land was a hazy tendril of black, almost lost amongst the vibrant green – weak, almost non-existent, but still a strong enough presence that she could tell what it was.

Jenova.

Had she hands in this non-corporeal form, she would have clenched them in anger. All the lives lost, all the battles fought – had they been for nothing? Had the despair of the past forty years for all the parties involved meant nothing? How could the ills of two millennia be cured if this alien parasite simply _would not die?_

Something must have been missed; some vital piece of information for the alien's destruction overlooked. Could it be that this creature from the stars actually had a soul? Would a spiritual confrontation be what it took to banish this evil entirely?

Jenova was weak, but she was weaker still. If she took the time to follow the beast and find out where it was going, she would risk discovery. She had no illusions that the alien would make the first attack if it realized it was being tailed – she all ready knew she didn't have the strength to fight back. She had been in the lifestream for far too long.

She watched as Jenova faded from her spiritual sight, fighting against the current of souls until it was too far away for her to see. The wandering spirits slowly returned in the alien's wake, brightening the sea that had suddenly become dark to her. 

She had to do something about this. She had to speak with the Elder.

.

.

.

---

.

****

[A/N: I apologize for the teaser, but the next chapter is plotted out and ready to go. For those of you who were unfortunate enough to read the original version of this, be warned that this isn't going to follow the plot of the first or second versions. Next up: Political maneuvering that has gone unnoticed for far too long - will the new Mayor of Junon be able to fix these problems in time? Probably not.**]**


End file.
